FG is in trouble thanks to its bumbling leader and ministers who won’t fight

STANDING among the sheep pens at a farm in Co Carlow, it struck me that Fine Gael’s election campaign was going wrong. Last Saturday, Fine Gael handlers arranged a press conference at the Richardson Farm in Tullow as the latest in a series of stunts. These minutely planned set pieces seem to be contradicting every rule that those strategists had set down over five years to govern the often unmanageable Enda Kenny.

Party planners told us for years that he was the chairman of a strong board, one of a formidable team of high-performing ministers. This campaign would see him strongly supported by his ministers. He would concentrate on meeting the public, canvassing, avoiding too much exposure to indepth questioning.

Yet here he was, standing in a shed, surrounded by sheep pens alongside a minister, Simon Coveney, who had been a player in the heave against him in 2010. Coveney is a gentleman farmer with an agriculture degree. He’s also a yachting millionaire and looked like he was off to a music festival.

Kenny? He looked like the person he is, a teacher who has spent 40 years living mostly in an apartment off Merrion Square as a TD.

It wasn’t an accident: this was an event that had been stage-managed to the most minute detail. It was a rather curious venue. A cold wind whistled through the walls, the sheep were quiet, the Taoiseach uncomfortable. There were only Fine Gael candidates and supporters there.

The few reporters there were kept well back and shouted questions at the Taoiseach. He was uneven, as always. At one point, he said his Government had rid the agriculture business of ‘cowboys’, which caused a few sniggers.

Then he was asked a ques- tion by an agriculture journalist: if his Government was so concerned about agriculture, would it not make it a single portfolio of the Department of Agriculture under one minister?

Kenny gave a long answer, talking about fish and the marine. He had clearly forgotten that Coveney, who was made Minister for Agriculture and the Marine in 2011, also became the Minister for Defence in 2014.

Then at the end a radio reporter corrected him, an audacious lack of regard for the Taoiseach. Did Coveney, pictured, bridle at this disrespect for the Taoiseach? Did he start roaring and shouting? No, Coveney stood by, saying little and certainly not protecting his Taoiseach.

Mr Kenny is gaffe-prone. We know that and have known it because of the many, many mistakes he has made in interviews and in his career down the years. He is not a good speaker, he is an

uneven interviewee. He lacks the warmth and personality to deflect difficult questions with humour and bonhomie.

His handlers, his paid advisers and the political subordinates who have organised this campaign know it and remind me of it all the time.

So why is he taking on the huge, unmanageable burden, seemingly singlehandedly, of trying to get Fine Gael re-elected to Government?

According to ministers, there is no single person in charge of the campaign. Leadership seems to be divided.

NOMINALLY, the boss is the communications wizard Mark Mortell. But he is a hired gun who does not work with politicians on a day-today basis. He is too nice, they say. When the Fine Gael campaign seemed to be disappearing into the abyss last Wednesday, after a twopoint drop in the polls to 26%, Mortell rang ministers telling them not to panic. ‘I’m not panicking,’ replied one. Politicians do not fear him. Former junior minister Brian Hayes is officially director of elections. He too is supposed to be a campaign boss, but since he departed to the European Parliament after failing to secure a cabinet post, senior ministers don’t fear him either.

There is a campaign management committee composed of Mortell, Hayes, communications director Majella Fitzpatrick, party general secretary Tom Curran and special advisor Ciarán Conlan. But a war run by committee never goes well.

Frank Flannery, the former director of elections, with his unrivalled knowledge of constituencies, is gone.

Fine Gael lacks a dominant sergeant major in the mould of PJ Mara, who ran Fianna Fáil’s threein-a-row victorious campaigns of 1997-2007.

And more importantly, to continue the Fianna Fáil comparisons, in the words of a Fine Gael minister, the party lacks a ‘bruiser, a Brian Cowen’. By that, they mean Brian Cowen in the 2007 general election, when he was minister for finance and rottweiler-in-chief to Bertie Ahern.

Backbench TDs, whose seats will be lost if the Fine Gael campaign continues to tank, are bewildered. They tell me there is no cabinet minister attacking, sacrificing their personal dignity and career prospects by issuing blood-cur- dling, spittle-spraying attacks on the venal Fianna Fáilers and terrorist-ridden Sinn Féiners.

When Fine Gael fell to 26% last Wednesday night, it was time, as they say in football, for leaders to step up.

Leo Varadkar took to the airwaves Thursday and, in a self-serving interview, exacerbated the failures, saying he thought Fine Gael would not be the largest party after the election, which is ludicrous.

James Reilly is toxic and hidden. Frances Fitzgerald too nice and schoolmarmish. Coveney is polite and watching his own career.

None is invested in the success of the Taoiseach. None like or respect their Taoiseach enough to lay down their political lives for him.

Michael Noonan, the obvious bruiser, is old and unwell and not up for the fight. Alan Shatter and Phil Hogan, two experienced fighters, have been jettisoned.

Kenny was supposed to be the captain of a team. Right now, he has no team and the captain isn’t much use without one.